Mercedes-Benz recently gave their electrification efforts a nice healthy jolt as the company not too long ago confirmed to be ramping up efforts to build more electric vehicles.
This even includes the Sprinter van, according to the Detroit Bureau. The outlet spoke to the chief in charge of the familiar VS30 van, Ulf Zillig, who said that Mercedes is currently in the process of researching and developing an electrified variant for the near future, with the addition of some autonomous driving technology.
While electrification is becoming more common in the normal car world, the commercial and heavy-duty side of the industry still has yet to be touched to the same extent. Mercedes-Benz seeks to make electrified heavy-duty commercial vehicles more readily available.
Daimler AG has been hard at work over the past year or so developing these new electric vehicles, including an all-electric Fuso Canter E-Cell in conjunction with Mitsubishi Fuso. Also, Mercedes just announced plans to make an Urban eTruck, or a heavy-duty short-haul vehicle for making urban deliveries.
Although electrified delivery trucks make sense theoretically, the challenge so far is developing the technology that can support the idea. As we know, electric powertrains still come with many limitations when compared to the typical internal combustion engine.
If anything, I think hybridized trucks make more sense for the time being until we can further develop ways to overcome current issues with electric vehicles, such as limited driving range, battery capacity and charging times.
– By: Chris Chin
Source: Detroit Bureau
Source: egmCarTech http://bit.ly/2avyABv
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